Eat Near: Sarasota Honey Company

Alma Johnson, 36, hops across a narrow strip of muddy water that, thanks to all the rain lately, has formed along the eastern edge of Sarasota's Sweetgrass Farms. From there, we walk along a narrow path that cuts through the woods that surround the hydroponic facility till we reach Johnson's "girls," the bees that live in a cluster of boxes topped with bricks and jars of water.

Just across the property line, new suburban homes are going up; not too far away, traffic zips down University Parkway. Not the kind of rural oasis you'd think would be best for an apiary. But that's part of Johnson's beekeeping philosophy—that bees raised in urban areas are exposed to a wider range of crops than bees that live near monoculture farms and therefore remain healthier and produce more and better honey. She says a backyard bee operation can produce more than three times as much honey as a farm colony.

And so she keeps bees all over. Here, at Sweetgrass Farms, out at Seneca Farms along Fruitville Road, and in personal plots in Indian Beach and Sapphire Shores and out on Anna Maria Island. And unlike many producers, she doesn't blend together the honey she harvests. She keeps the product from each location separate and marks the different varieties on her bottles, which sell at Sweetgrass, the D'Lites Shoppe in Lakewood Ranch, and at neighborhood food and craft fairs.

You wouldn't think honeys produced from spots just seven or so miles apart would taste very different, but they do. Her "inner city" blend from Sarasota tastes floral, with a runny texture that's worlds apart from one that comes from bees kept near the bay, which feels much denser and gooier and sticks to your tongue.

Johnson was first exposed to beekeeping through her grandmother. She grew up in Texas, in a region where bees are so plentiful you have to shuffle your feet while walking through clover to avoid getting stung.

At 30, Johnson learned she had cervical cancer, and began rethinking her health regimen. "What can I do to make my body better?" she asked herself. Research into organic practices and the benefits of local produce prompted her to start what she called a "victory garden," but her plants weren't thriving. Then came the "a-ha" realization: "Grandma always had bees in her garden." Johnson threw herself into bee and honey research, attending conferences and picking the brains of bee experts.

Johnson's day job, meanwhile, was working with special needs children. While state budget cuts eliminated one of her programs, she remains active working with special needs kids, and is offering Sarasota Honey Company, her emerging honey production business, as a way to help young people earn money and develop job skills. The ultimate goal: to fund classes for special needs children and young adults with funds generated by the sale of honey.

Sarasota Honey is also training others in the art of beekeeping, with regular seminars that demystify bee biology and behavior and lay out the tools you need to start up a backyard beehive. Johnson aims to provide a thorough "meat and potatoes" intro to the hobby that you might not get from other classes.

One trend Johnson sees in her lessons: more and more women getting into beekeeping as both hobby and profession, a world typically dominated by men. "It's a sturdy job to do," Johnson says. Boxes can weigh more than 100 pounds.

But it's a trend that makes sense. "Ninety percent of the hives are female," Johnson says, pointing to her Sweetgrass Farms boxes as she explains typical bee behavior. Each box here bears the name of its queen. When Johnson first started beekeeping, she named them after the children with whom she works. These days, she's got too many colonies for that. "Now I've got a baby book," she says.

For more information about Sarasota Honey Company, call 726-8755 or visit sarasotahoney.com.

This is the 77th entry in Eat Near, a regular column dedicated to all the lovely food that folks on the Suncoast grow, raise, kill or craft. If you have an idea for someone/thing to feature, email me at eatnearsrq@gmail.com or hit me up on Twitter: @LeveyBaker.

Last modified: August 31, 2015
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